Free Flight Sensor

U.S. munition safety standards require sensing two independent environmentsbefore arming the warhead. One of these safety signatures is supposed to beassociated with the launch environment and one with the post-launchenvironment. For gravity-release weapons released from aircraft the firstenvironment is typically lanyard pull with the associated release from thebomb rack, and the second environment is ram air ingested into a generatordevice. While this has worked fine for many years on non-powered free-fallweapons, there is an increasing use of powered and non-powered guidedweapons where the airflow is not stable or predictable.The proposed Phase I program will result in a system-level design of a smartsensor that can be used for a post-launch safety sensor for high altitudereleases or highly-maneuverable weapons where airflow is not dependable. Thetwo main alternatives to be considered are an acceleration sensor thatmonitors the dynamics of the release and flight event, and a proximitysensor to detect positive separation from the aircraft.The resulting sensor will have application for a broad class of powered andnon-powered guided weapons, as well as significant commercial applications. Successful completion of the proposed program will result in improvedreliability of powered and non-powered guided weapons released fromaircraft. This will not only increase combat effectiveness, it will reducethe problems of duds contaminating the battlefield.The commercial potential depends on which of the identified alternatives isselected for full development following the Phase I analyses and tradeoffstudies, but there is significant potential for commercial use of thetechnology for transportation monitoring and security applications.